Battle Begins Quotes & Sayings

The battle is fought and decided by the quartermasters, long before the shooting begins. — Erwin Rommel

I twist away, pulling her with me, and the battle begins. We roll over each other, tumbling, wrestling, tangling in the sand until my hands find her hands and my lips find her lips and then we slow. We slow and slow and slow until we move together as one. — Veronica Rossi

It will be a battle, then. A siege. A hundred-thousand Ink-borne arrows, flying forth from my flaming pen to assault the walls of tyrannical Cold that hold this man in awful rapture.
It will be campaign for my friend's very soul. A war of Ice, Ink, and Ember.
So be it.
My pen scratches the icy parchment once more. A second Ember joins the first.
The War begins.
-The Penitent God — S.G. Night

This is the story of a man who went far away for a long time, just to play a game. The man is a game-player called 'Gurgeh'. The story starts with a battle that is not a battle, and ends with a game that is not a game. Me? I'll tell you about me later. This is how the story begins. — Anonymous

So what happens when your universe begins to get off balance, and you don't have any experience with bringing it back to center? All you can do is fight a losing battle, waiting for those walls to collapse, and your life to become one huge mystery ashtray. — Neal Shusterman

Before our eyes is fought a battle of symbols ... for there can be theatre only from the moment when the impossible really begins and when the poetry that occurs on the stage sustains and superheats the realized symbols. — Antonin Artaud

Everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink - for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder. — Honore De Balzac

1000 mile road begins with a single step, the freedom road begins with a scream that fires the battle, and the greatness road begins with a question that fires the spark of the change. — Ammar Moussa

Fights and quarrels don't come from lack of skill in conflict resolution. They don't come from people who are irritating. They come from desires that battle within. My desires are occupying the place of command and control inside my heart. Behavior Begins with the Heart — Tedd Tripp

Twenty-two hours and our war begins
Our war of limbs
and lips
and hands ...
The best part of finally
Not calling retreat?
The showers above us
Raining down on our feet
While the bombs are exploding and the guns fire their rounds. Before the two of us collapse to the ground. Before the battle, before the war ...
You need to know
I'd go fifty-nine more.
Whatever it takes to let you win.
I'd retreat all over
and over
again. — Colleen Hoover

The commander must decide how he will fight the battle before it begins. He must then decide who he will use the military effort at his disposal to force the battle to swing the way he wishes it to go; he must make the enemy dance to his tune from the beginning and not vice versa. — Bernard Law Montgomery

In life when we feel we have reached a limit, that is when the true battle begins. Just when you despair and think it is impossible to go any further, will you become apathetic, or will you say it's not over and stand up with an unyielding spirit? The battle is decided by this single determination. — Daisaku Ikeda

Grandmaster games are said to begin with novelty, which is the first move of the game that exits the book. It could be the fifth, it could be the thirty-fifth. We think about a chess game as beginning with move one and ending with checkmate. But this is not the case. The games begins when it gets out of book, and it end when it goes into book..And this is why Game 6 [between Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue] didn't count ... Tripping and falling into a well on your way to the field of battle is not the same thing as dying in it ... Deep Blue is only itself out of book; prior to that it is nothing. Just the ghosts of the game itself. — Brian Christian

Before the battle begins and the outcome has been decided, let the adversary know that you are a fearless competitor, worthy of a second opinion. — Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.

Military metaphors are rarely exact, but sending Republicans against Democrats when the issue hangs in the balance is nearly always as futile as sending George B. McClellan against Robert E. Lee, the Italians against Marshal Montgomery's desert rats or an Arab armored division against an Israeli rifle company. The copy desk can write the headline before the battle begins and take the rest of the night off. — Wesley Pruden

The dance of battle is always played to the same impatient rhythm. What begins in a surge of violent motion is always reduced to the perfectly still. — Sun Tzu

We don't know when the war will end, so we can't continue our journey," he said. "The battles may last for a long time, perhaps even years. There are powerful forces on both sides, and the war is important to both armies. It's not a battle of good against evil. It's a war between forces that are fighting for the balance of power, and, when that type of battle begins, it lasts longer than others - because Allah is on both sides. — Paulo Coelho

Anecdotal tales of combat are meaningless to Americans, we absorb tales of violence like a sponge. Mythological violence is second nature to us. The real thing is not. War begins long before battle. It begins when we are boys longing for the initiation rite of the warrior and everything it promises: sexual prowess and sexual license. War lasts long after the last bullet is fired; into old age and death we go carrying a secret knowledge that no one wants to know about. War is the opposite of sexual prowess. War is desire stripped of humanity. — Alfredo Vea

Strength to do battle begins with enlisting the strength of God. — Gordon B. Hinckley

It is a period of civil war. The spaceships of the rebels, striking swift From base unseen, have gain'd a vict'ry o'er The cruel Galactic Empire, now adrift. Amidst the battle, rebel spies prevail'd And stole the plans to a space station vast, Whose pow'rful beams will later be unveil'd And crush a planet: 'tis the DEATH STAR blast. Pursu'd by agents sinister and cold, Now Princess Leia to her home doth flee, Deliv'ring plans and a new hope they hold: Of bringing freedom to the galaxy. In time so long ago begins our play, In star-crossed galaxy far, far away. — Ian Doescher

It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. you feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. — Yann Martel

A Zoroastrian Persian emperor called Shapur condemned Christians because they "attribute the origin of snakes and creeping things to a good God." For him, such things could only be the creation of a separate, malign creator. The great Persian national epic the Shahnamah begins with a great army of fairies and animals that had chosen the side of good over evil, setting out for battle with Angra Mainyu. (If this sounds like C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, that is because he was a great admirer of the Shahnamah - and he called Zoroastrianism his favorite "pagan" religion.) — Gerard Russell

So in that dark and tangled night,
the chaw of chaws rose to flight,
with talons bloodied, feathers singed.
A battle won - a war begins! — Kathryn Lasky

And so the great battle begins in earnest: the battle for your heart, the battle to find a life worth living, the battle not to lose heart as you find a life worth living. — John Eldredge

A fearless person wins half the battle before it begins. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Remorse has no place in a warrior's mind ... A war is like a game of chess, Nicholaa. Every battle is like a well-thought-out move on the board. Once it begins, there shouldn't be any emotion involved whatsoever. — Julie Garwood

I am glad I am an optimist. The pessimist is half-licked before he starts. The optimist has won half the battle, the most important half that applies to himself, when he begins his approach to a subject with the proper mental attitude. The optimist may not understand, or if he understands he may not agree with, prevailing ideas; but he believes, yes, knows, that in the long run and in due course there will prevail whatever is right and best. — Thomas Buckner

To persuade your enemy to (retreat) before the fight is to defeat them even before the battle begins. An enemy made ally is no longer an enemy. — Sun Tzu

Besides, they say, when we eat something, what really happens is this. Our failing health starts fighting off the attacks of hunger, using the food as an ally. Gradually it begins to prevail, and, in this very process of winning back its normal strength, experiences the sense of enjoyment which we find so refreshing. Now, if health enjoys the actual battle, why wouldn't it also enjoy the victory? Or are we to suppose that when it has finally managed to regain its former vigour - the one thing that it has been fighting for all this time - it promptly falls into a coma, and fails to notice or take advantage of its success? As for the idea that one isn't conscious of health except through its opposite, they say that's quite untrue. Everyone's perfectly aware of feeling well, unless he's asleep or actually feeling ill. Even the most insensitive and apathetic sort of person will admit that it's delightful to be healthy - and what is delight, but a synonym for pleasure? — Thomas More

I realized that healing begins with our taking our pain out of its diabolic isolation and seeing that whatever we suffer, we suffer it in communion with all of humanity, and yes, all of creation. In so doing, we become participants in the great battle against the powers of darkness. Our little lives participate in something larger. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

That space. It begins in the middle of my forehead and ends in the middle of my groin. It is, variously, as wide as my body, as narrow as a slit in a fortress wall. On days when thought flows freely or better yet clarifies with effort, it expands gloriously. On days when anxiety and self-pity crowd in, it shrinks, how fast it shrinks! When the space is wide and I occupy it fully, I taste the air, feel the light. I breathe evenly and slowly. I am peaceful and excited, beyond influence or threat. Nothing can touch me. I'm safe. I'm free. I'm thinking. When I lose the battle to think, the boundaries narrow, the air is polluted, the light clouds over. All is vapor and fog, and I have trouble breathing. — Vivian Gornick

Always set your mind to think thoughts of victory even before the battle begins, this way you will experience limitless possibilities. — Jaachynma N.E. Agu

Keep this straight in your head: we are not fighting an alien invasion we're leading a revolution . And today the battle begins. — Steven Moffat